Having a Master of Business Administration has become one of the most prized qualifications that upstarts can seek out. Even despite several leading business figures criticizing those who get an MBA, the knowledge you attain from an MBA will serve you for the rest of your life.
You don’t necessarily have to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School to become the next success story, but a growing body of evidence suggests that having an MBA could help you as an upstart.
It’s true that not everyone benefits from earning an online MBA, but enough entrepreneurs have benefited to make it a worthwhile investment.
Forging an Invaluable Network.
Ever heard the saying that it’s not what you know, but “who” you know. The people who were accepted into an MBA course have most likely earned their right at the school, and some of them will have years of experience in business under their belt. Meanwhile, you will have other students who have worked for non-profit organizations, or they have even founded startup companies. The people earning their MBA will be talented individuals who are worth networking with. Your classmates could one day turn into insightful business partners, but you could also use them to help you seek out knowledgeable investors.
Learning What It Takes to Expand.
While anyone can begin doing business, not anyone has the ability to steer it in the right direction. Nine of the 10 business started will fail within the first five years, which shows you need purpose and a powerful direction. Even when the economy looks like it’s growing, this doesn’t mean that you can guarantee your success. If you want to grow a successful business, you need shrewd judgment, and not every entrepreneur possesses this talent naturally. That doesn’t, however, mean that you can’t acquire it. When you study for your MBA, you sharpen your business skills, and you learn how to turn sound ideas into actionable steps that turn into valuable business opportunities. Even when you have a fantastic idea, you will have to properly execute the idea, and business school will teach you how to do it.
Humbling Yourself.
Going to earn an MBA will teach you how little you knew before you hit the books. In fact, it can leave you feeling woefully vulnerable. You will learn many techniques and soft skills that may have never even occurred to you until you started school. What are some of the things that you might learn in business school? What you will learn includes:
- Business ethics
- Doing business in a foreign country
- Value of giving and receiving feedback
- How to focus on a long-term business plan
Part of earning your MBA means that you will study unique business cases and dissect what works and what doesn’t work. This will prove invaluable insight into how businesses become successful and how they fail. It’s true that no two businesses will ever be exactly alike, but you can learn from the mistakes of others as a powerful lesson and a deterrent to making the same mistakes that they did. It’s possible that you could even learn of catastrophic mistakes that will keep you safe from making the same ones.
Sharing Innovative Ideas.
An MBA program has proven a hotbed of valuable ideas. Many students who earn their MBA may have a valuable idea germinating in their head, but they’re not sure about the best way to implement it. Going through an MBA program will help you take a vague idea and draw lines around it so that it becomes more valuable. Getting ideas beyond their embryonic stage is important, and an MBA program can help you to give birth to great ideas.
Earning an MBA takes two years of rigorous study, but it will hand you the tools and skills needed to evaluate ideas and decide on the business ideas that will be the most valuable. An MBA course has become a place where entrepreneurs can receive some of the most valuable feedback on their ideas so that they can tweak them and make them even better. In addition, you can help your colleagues to develop their plans as they help you as well.
